How long can two people stay together
with this in the news and that in the sky?
A change in love is a change in the weather.
As I have loved you . . . love one another,
said Christ, then disappeared. Why
can’t God and mortals stay together?
His absence so long—it feels like never.
Does to love, then, mean to leave? To die
suggest a lovely change in the weather?
Questions are common and kisses too rare.
Hold me, though the tectonic sheets fly
apart till two can no longer stand together.
The fault between us grows, but where
earth is moved seeds take hold. Let us try
to change our love, to change the weather.
—Jim Richards
What We’ve Been Reading—Autumn 2025
First Things staff share their most recent autumn reading recommendations.
Walker Percy’s Pilgrimage
People can get used to most anything. Even the abyss may be rendered tolerable—or, for that matter,…
Outgrowing Nostalgia in The Ballad of Wallis Island
No man is an island,” John Donne declares in his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. The Ballad of…